### The Daily Horror That Is

# DATA INPUT

MONDAY

9:00am
I am tired. I want a coffee, but the machine costs 12p and I ain't funding the man's private yacht collection in Cannes, next door to David Bowie with sex parties and snorting cocaine through a diamond straw.

10:00am
Eight cups of coffee and 96 pence later, I pick up my first form. It is an application for a credit card with a £10,000 limit. I wonder what I would do with £10,000. Decide that I would by my own shop that only sells Kit-Kats, Bric-a-Brac, Tic-Tacs, and Nik-Naks. Then I'd be a fat-cat and hob-nob with the big-wigs.

11:00am
Conversation with person next to me. About death, and growing old. His contention is that dirty old men must have had a predisposition to dirtiness in their youth. I say that the condition of age be-dirtens a man. A compromise is met when we agree that dirty old men are more like a force of nature, having existed throughout Creation. As the first fish crawled onto the shore and gasped its vital virgin breath, it's first sight was a league of bored dirty old men, masturbating.

12:00pm
Dinner. Sausage roll. Try out fish puns, come up with "Tench nervous haddock". Am told by the boss that I am not up to quota. I have one half completed form, which I couldn't complete because the applicant was called "Cherry Vavangas". I explain that I am above data input, but very, very, quietly, and after the boss has gone.

1:00pm
Have to work. Have to work. To atone for my sins of the morning, I must work at double speed. I psyche myself up in the cigarette room. Talk to an overly-painted woman about her children. Apparently, they never get in touch. I ask her how she finds so much to say about them, and she replies that she has spies.

2:00pm
Return to my seat. Work solidly for one hour.

3:00pm
Brain fuses to skull. Cannot talk. Try thinking about something, but my eyes and hands are ignoring any pulses my weakened brain is sending. I don't know if I am typing the right words, I don't know what the words are - my eyes have bypassed the cognitive functions and are connected directly to the fingertips.

4:00pm
A quality control check turns up the fact that for one hours I have been typing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", which is strange, because Jack isn't my name.

5:00pm
It is home time, but the fusion of my brain at 3:00 stops me from moving. I decide, or rather circumstances decide for me, that I will stay in the office until the next day. Someone takes my application forms away, and slowly, slowly, I begin to thaw.